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Goodguy  3d ago (text post)   Edited 3d ago   9755 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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When all is said and done, as much as I like Israel and want them to succeed, as much as I can justify their actions from their perspective, if they're a political liability, I'm in favor of dropping them. Their prosperity is not worth trading our own, and I don't like justifying actions we take in furtherance of their agenda to other bitter voters.

At the same time, I hope this means we drop Europe even harder, because they are far worse allies than Israel is (was?).

I hope this means we drop Europe even harder, because they are far worse allies than Israel is

Remind me, which of those shed blood and treasure when America asked them to go into Afghanistan to avenge 9/11?

Think they'd do that again today? Not the same river, not the same man. And excluding Israel may have been more of a strategic decision since they are a lot closer to the conflict and get blood running hot quicker among the locals.

I understand there's a small percentage of disenfranchised right wing voters in these European countries. But it's kind of like giving aid to North Korea; you know that any alliances you build will be with the wrong people. That's democracy in action for you. It would be better for both parties if the postwar liberal order was destroyed.

Last time it went really badly, and not 25 years later Americans are calling us the worst allies ever. We’d have to be insane to do it again.

Sounds like the feeling is mutual, then. Why complain about it?

A: You're a shitty friend.

B: I helped you move house.

A: Sure, but that was weeks ago. What have you done for me lately? And anyway, you wouldn't do it again.

B: Since it got me this, I sure wouldn't.

A: See, you don't want to be my friend anyway!

You see the issue, right?

Look, from my perspective, 9/11 happened before I could even remember it, and the entire GWOT happened while I was too young to know much about it at all, and everyone hated it. The more appropriate analogy was not "you're my friend who helped me move my house last week" and more like "we were two fellow childhood delinquents who set fire to the school and now 30 years later we're both drugged-up squatters in our own houses". In this analogy, yes, the two former friends would have to be crazy to try to help each other. They can barely even help themselves.

Really, the U.K. isn't the worst of Europe, I'd say that award goes to Spain. But to me, most of Europe seems to be bloated and useless. In contrast, Israel blows people up every day, and they do it mostly face-to-face. They still do shit because they have to do shit.

I've seen you in other threads decrying anyone who wants to cut ties and break alliances. But why? What do you get out of such an alliance? That was more my point.

Look, from my perspective, 9/11 happened before I could even remember it, and the entire GWOT happened while I was too young to know much about it at all, and everyone hated it.

Wow, now I feel really old...

Basically, a huge proportion of Americans and the White House were determined to lead a punitive expedition on Afghanistan and anybody else who had hidden Osama Bin Laden. The British PM was very clear that we had to keep the Americans close no matter what (common culture with the Americans had been our most important diplomatic relationship since WW1) and so we went in to support them, with the UK government manufacturing excuses to allow it to do so.

The major complication of our military support is that, under American direction and with the goal of keeping that relationship strong, we had essentially retooled our entire army to be a support wing for the American army. We do reconnaisance, intelligence, and a few other things really well, but we don't have a full stack any more. Everything we have is either purchased from America, or was designed to be interoperable with NATO (American) supply chains and nothing else. It was a very slow thumbscrews process, essentially: we continue to get American support to project power on the global stage, as long as we retool our army and economy so that we can never act independently or ally with anyone except the Americans. Then, as with software, enshittification arrived once we had no other options. The level of influence the Americans gave us declined, the level of support we were expected to provide increased.

The main thing that we really needed to get out of an alliance in this specific case was aid in 2016. A post-Brexit softball trade deal for 20 years would have given us a roaring start, shown confidence in us, and allowed us to negotiate much better terms with the EU. But we didn't get that support when we needed it for internal political reasons:

  1. Obama hated us for Empire, and was attached to the EU.
  2. Trump liked us and wanted to support us in theory, but cared way more for looking hardball on trade deals. (We also utterly sabotaged that relationship with TDS, exacerbated by UK Remainers wanting to prevent a trade deal in order to tie us back to the EU, but Trump was never going to produce a trade deal that didn't exploit our weak position rather than shoring it up.)
  3. Biden hated us because of Ireland.

So basically our military and economic support for America has resulted in hamstringing our military and letting us down in the moment we really needed it. You say that this is good reason to break up, and in theory I agree with you, but I can't help feeling that the balance of support is very much in our favour and it would be appropriate to bring it back to equal before that. Also, the UK government and civil service (and anyone over 40) just isn't emotionally ready for that.

This history makes me sad.

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